The Internet Archive just lost its appeal over ebook lending

The Internet Archive has lost its appeal in a fight to lend out scanned ebooks without the approval of publishers. In a decision on Wednesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that permitting the Internet Archive’s digital library would “allow for widescale copying that deprives creators of compensation and diminishes the incentive to produce new works.”

The decision is another blow to the nonprofit in the Hachette v. Internet Archive case. In 2020, four major publishers — Hachette, Penguin Random House, Wiley, and HarperCollins — sued the Internet Archive over claims its digital library constitutes “willful digital piracy on an industrial scale.”
↫ Emma Roth

If you’re a library and scan books and offer a lending service, you’re committing “willful digital piracy on an industrial scale”. If you scan the entire goddamn internet without any regard for licensing or copyright and regurgitate chunks of it on command, you’re a visionary, a revolutionary, a genius.

Make it make sense.